Collected Works (Vol. II)

THE GOD-EATER 133 Maurya. Then, is the power that makes me in the end True Goddess Maurya, yours, yours only? Criospa. [Solemuly.] No! Stop! ask no more! Therelies the awful crux. Blind are fate’s eyes, and pinioned are will’s wings, In you the whole chance lies. MAURYA. In me? CRIOSDA. In you. Maurya. I will do all to win! CRIOSDA. Do all? MAURYA. Do all. Criospa. Ah then! No, no, it is not yet enough. Not definite yet. Stop! fool, shall I hint and ruin all with a word? Backwards or forwards, the blow goes home either way. [Looks at her wrth keen fierce eyes.| Ah! Maurya. [A @ttle frightened.| Come, O my brother ! It is time to go. CrIOsSDA. No! leave me. It is but an hour. [MAURYA smiles ; leaves her hand a little i his, and so passes out slowly through the open door wrth her eyes fixed in love and trust on him. CRIOSDA Starts up and pulls fiercely at a second lever, and the door clangs to with the same nerve- shattering shock, CRIOSDA Staggers to altar ; and, with his hand on tt, turns towards door. Mouths of God’s mercy ! I would her eyes were bleeding wounds*sin my heart! Ah though! If she were a dog I could not do it. She is my sister—— |Zurns wth a cry to throne and flings up his hands. and I will! Death! Death! It is a year to-night. I arrayed her first In yon gold ornaments—-My brain is sick ! I want coffee—or hashish—No! That is for her ! I must be very clear and calm, very clear, very calm, How I must be ill— [Correcting himself with effort.) I I must be. Ha! [Goes to altar, opens it, takes out a flask filled with a clear pale blue liquor with rosy stars of light in 7t, pours it into a long vial, and holds 7t to the light. The room ts lighted by electricity, the globes being the eyes of strange sculplurea stone beasts on the walls. So far the story is true. [Drinks a little. Why, that is better already. I am again the priest of Maurya—who is the brother of Maurya? A trivial ape o’ the time !— cold, logical to a fault !--Ay! and a crime, a crime at which the stars shake in the heaven, men might think. Yet the stars, I will wager, are indifferent. True, the news has not reached them: true, that star I see is not a star; it was so six, ten, twenty thousand years ago—logical, I say !—and I will drink, for parenthetical is a poor substitute—- [ Drinks. Why, how thou fir’st me ! with that icy fire Of adamant thought. Kt well befits this hour If I recoil the chain whose last smooth link Slides o’er Time’s cogwheel. In the be- ginning then The vastness of the heavens and the earth Created the idea of (od. So Levi once Sarcastic in apostasy ; @ rebours. So Miiller, mythopoeic in his mood Of the unmasking mythopoeia, Now Profounder science, Spencer’s amplitude, Allen’s too shallow erudition, Frazer’s Research, find men have made—since men made aught— Their Gods, and slain, and eaten. face! I, Criosda of the Mist, see truth in all Rather than truth in none. Below the rite, The sight! Beyond the priest, the power! Above The sense, the soul! their gods Sur- So men who made